1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the disclosure relate in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to managing an integrated catalog facility (ICF) catalog.
2. Description of the Related Art
The processing power and storage capacity of today's information processing systems continues to grow. At the same, the volume and complexity of the information processed by these systems has increased proportionately. One known approach to managing this information is to organize it into catalogs. In essence, a catalog is a data set that contains information about the organization and location of other data sets. A data set is a collection of logically related data stored on one or more storage volumes. As an example, a data set may be a source program, a library of macros, or a file of data records used by an information processing program. A catalog does not have to be on the same volumes as the data set it describes and can likewise refer to hundreds or thousands of data sets spread across many volumes.
Catalogs are sometimes structured in an integrated catalog facility (ICF), which stores catalog records in two components. The first of these components is the basic catalog structure (BCS) and the second is the virtual sequential access method (VSAM) volume data set (VVDS). The primary function of the BCS is to point to the volumes on which a data set is stored. A BCS does not have to be on the same volume as the data set it references and there can be more than one BCS on a volume. The VVDS contains the information needed to process VSAM data sets and there is one VVDS on each volume containing data sets cataloged by the ICF. Another advantage to catalogs is that they allow users to find and access a data set by name without knowing the exact location of the data set in memory storage or how the storage is structured.
Maintaining ICF catalog performance can become more challenging as the number of catalogs and their associated data sets grow. In particular, catalog throughput may be affected due to contention over Catalog Address Space (CAS) resources. However, current catalog performance tools are static in nature and only provide after-the-fact analysis. Furthermore, none of these provide a dynamic display of catalog throughput nor do they provide the ability to make changes dynamically as the catalog workload is being processed. In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a real time monitor to allow resolution of ICF catalog performance issues.